New form of gene therapy shown to produce rejuvenating effect in mice, although scientists say human clinical applications are decade away<p>Wrinkles, grey hair and niggling aches are normally regarded as an inevitable part of growing older, but now scientists claim that the ageing process may be …

Always towering among the tree tops, moving languidly through the bush, giraffes are usually the first animals spotted on safari. And yet, the world’s tallest land animal has become among the most rare, now facing extinction.<p>The International Union for Conservation of Nature placed the giraffe on …

Pet dogs could live 15 months longer by taking a simple pill which delays the onset of fatal heart disease, a new study suggests.<p>Around 250,000 dogs suffer from mitral valve disease which can lead to heart failure and eventually early death for around one in 12 dogs in Britain.<p>Smaller dogs like …

Amphibians survived the dinosaur extinction just fine. Why are they in peril now?<p>In September, a frog died in an Atlanta botanical garden. With it went an entire species never to hop along the Earth again. Biologists at Zoo Atlanta who’d looked after the frog for the past 12 years called him …

Scientists have been recording data in DNA for a while, but it has usually involved bacteria and other simple organisms. MIT, however, just took a big leap forward. Its researchers have used the CRISPR gene editing technique to record histories in human cell DNA for the first time. They've crafted …

Kitty can haz gravity.<p>It’s not just humans that can understand the laws of physics in a practical, everyday sense. Cats, too, have a good grasp of how the physical world works. They know, for instance, that if there’s a scratching sound coming from behind the refrigerator, then a mouse may be about …

A new species of boa constrictor has been discovered on a remote island in the Bahamas.<p>Scientists identified 20 of the metre-long snakes during two expeditions to the Caribbean islands, the second made in October last year.<p>One of the creatures made a dramatic appearance by slithering on to the head …

(Reuters) - U.S. health officials on Thursday reported the first case in the country of a patient with an infection resistant to a last-resort antibiotic, and expressed grave concern that the superbug could pose serious danger for routine infections if it spreads.<p>The mcr-1 plasmid-borne colistin …

<b>Four-in-10 patients with a deadly skin cancer were still alive after three years when given a drug to boost their immune system, a study suggests.</b><p>The trial gave 655 patients with melanoma the drug pembrolizumab, which stops cancers evading the immune system's assault.<p>The data, released ahead of the …

The new documentary Sonic Sea explores how all the machinery we’re putting into the ocean is disrupting the fragile underwater audio ecosystem.<p>One morning, on a beach in the Bahamas, whale researcher Ken Balcomb discovered a stranded whale. With the help of assistants, he tried to push it out into …

The brains of the elderly and younger people with autism and schizophrenia may share a common link: Both have low levels of vitamin B12, researchers say.<p>The facts that blood levels of B12 do not always mirror brain levels of the vitamin, and that brain levels decrease more over the years than blood …